“Hope you’re right. Wow.”
“Light in the head?”
“Um-hm.”
“Lay back.”
“No way.”
“Well, pass out then.”
“I’ll lay back.”
“Better?”
“Um.”
She lay back down on the bench and felt her chest rising fast, her back pressing into the pads, the air rushing in and out. Mike was gone. Just her and the white ceiling and the mirrors in the periphery of her vision and the ringing in her ears. Lots of red.
When her heart rate settled Merci dozed a few minutes. She awoke to the sounds of weights, male voices, the harsh light of the gym in her eyes. She sat up, looked around and yawned. Her muscles felt enlarged and stupid. The pile of spilled weights was still next to her bench.
She worked herself up and collected the weights, walking them one at a time back to the rack and sliding them onto the pegs. Then she lumbered on heavy legs over to the stationary bike and climbed on, setting the resistance lower than the first time, but still pretty darned high.
For just a moment she thought about who she was, and about how strong she was. She remembered the most important thing she had learned in her life thus fan you are powerful and you can make things bend to your will as long as you try hard enough.
Your will is the power to move the world.
So she set the resistance even higher than the first time. Effort was how things got moved. Effort was pain. Pain was strength.
She looked at herself in the mirror as she stood on the pedals to get them going. Pale as a sidewalk, she thought, and about as good looking.
Merci thought of Hess to steady herself — how he might do this, his economy and focus. She liked the way he didn’t waste anything. She couldn’t forget the look on his face that morning when he’d seen the hood of Ronnie Stevens’s car. It was the saddest, wisest face she’d ever seen. He looked like Lincoln. But he had been diminished by what he had seen. The Purse Snatcher had taken something from him, she thought, and that made her feel angry on Hess’s behalf. For him. For someone not herself. It was nice to admire someone you didn’t want to be.
Thirty minutes on this bike should do it, she thought: burn the foolishness out of my brain and burn the strength into my muscles.
She picked up an ankle holster for her .40 cal derringer, got some takeout food and brought it home. Home was a rambling house that used to belong to the owner of the large orange grove that surrounded it. But most of the grove was dozed years ago for housing tracts, all but a couple of acres, around the house, which was now owned by a friend of her father and rented cheap. It was old and the faucets groaned and the fuses blew in heat waves and the garage was full of black widows. It sat back at the end of a long dirt drive that filled with potholes in winter and bred dust in summer.
The land was flat and you wouldn’t even know the housing tracts surrounded the grove because the trees were healthy and high. It was like living inside a wall of green. Merci liked the cheap rent and the smell of the orange trees and blossoms and the fact that she had no neighbors to consider. She thought little of strolling around in nothing but her underwear, behind open windows and screen doors, stereo and Sheriff’s band short wave turned up loud while the orange grove cats lounged in the sunshine on her porch, licking themselves incessantly, alert to the sound of the food bag. Once in a while she’d walk out through the rows and look at things. Not much to see, really, because the big citrus company that worked these acres did a meticulous job. The workers were quiet Mexicans who hid their cheerfulness when she was around.
She stared back at one of the cats as she unlocked the door, then picked up the fast food and holster and went inside. She loved many things about cats without loving any one cat in the least. The place got hot during the day so she opened all the windows and doors, then went to her bedroom and stripped down to undies and her sport shirt with the sleeves rolled up, working off her bra and tossing it on the floor. She set her holster and automatic beside the bed, which is where it stayed when it wasn’t on her. She strapped on the new ankle rig and slid in the derringer — lots of play, but the strap was good and taut. Skivvies or not, it was good to have a gun on, or at least one in each room, positioned where she could get it quick if she needed to. One of her father’s habits. She had no fear at home. This was more or less a game she played to keep her life interesting.
Again she pictured her partner’s face that morning. In the same way that something was taken out of Hess, something was taken out of her, too, and this reminded her that nothing they did would make a difference in the long run. The short run was their stage, collar the creeps and maybe save a life or even two.
But a purse full of human guts sitting on a Chevy Malibu in the pretty Southern California sunshine put you in your place. It said: you might find the perpetrator of this, but there will be other perpetrators of even worse things to follow. More and more of them, following your own children down the years if you ever have any. Job security, she thought. It really was a shame. It wasn’t a surprise, though. Her father had taught her early on that being a cop was just plugging the dike for a while. It didn’t make the calling any less genuine, but it suggested something about what you should risk your life for and what you shouldn’t.
Of course, her father was an ineffectual man who never risked one whisker for anything. A man who couldn’t stand up to a crazy wife was doomed.
She listened to her messages. One from Joan Cash, just a hi, how are you. One from bumbling, lovable old Dad — Merci’s mother wasn’t feeling well and it made her father frantic with worry. And one from Mike, saying he hoped she was okay, quite a workout she had in the gym today, coffee sometime? He must have called right after she left the weight room. That was all. They all seemed to imply so much obligation and worry. Sometimes Merci really didn’t want to know how other people were feeling. Not that she didn’t understand or respect those feelings. It was just that she didn’t give a shit about them right that minute.
She called Hess.
No answer, so she left a message — nothing urgent, just wanted to talk, call if you want. She wondered if he was out getting pounded at the Wedge or maybe having another treatment. What a strange feeling to be him, she thought, to have almost seven decades of your life gone and maybe one left if you were completely lucky, but to be unsure if you’d see another year.
She wondered how come he had gotten married and divorced so many times. Why he never had children. Why he came back to work on something like the Purse Snatcher. Hess was interesting to think about because he was so different from herself. It was funny that he’d told her she’d have to feel what others felt and think what others thought in order to get ahead in the department, in life itself. Maybe she could try to feel like him.
It probably wouldn’t be that hard because Hess was so large and simple. Of course, Mike McNally was large and simple too, until you got to know him. Then he seemed to grow small and hectic as a five-year-old at his own birthday party: me, me, me. She actually missed Mike right now, missed some of the casual hours. A guy who talked all the time made the hours seem longer. That was good. She missed his profile and the blue light on his cheeks when he was watching TV. And all the sweaty athletics in bed, well, she missed them too, although they made her feel things she wasn’t in favor of feeling.
But she wasn’t about to talk to him every single night, be his current steady woman, baby-sit his resentful kid, get engaged or even talk about marriage. So, she broke it all off rather than just part of it — which part? — and that was enough to loose the dogs of hell on her. Mike’s dogs. Mike’s Truth Box. The hardest part of the whole miserable thing was the way Mike attacked her for being closed and cold and controlling, and apparently blabbing such things to everyone else, thus the remark in the cafeteria regarding her sexual preference. Just thinking about it made her face flush with anger.